Tag: Provinces

Love sees differently

It’s half past five AM. Outside the Women Association of Ho Chi Minh City, I heard music. Not hip hop, not trance. Jut Gold music “Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay”, blasted from a boom box . It’s dark, but the sidewalk hosted a group of women practicing Tai-Chi.  The music was about acceptance, about one wing drops after another. But here they stood, with graceful moves and fateful lives.

Their counterparts meanwhile distribute magazines, newspapers, meat, seafood etc.. for the city of 10 million. I struggled to find room on the sidewalk for the run, before hordes of scooters claiming their right of way.

Common city dwellers don’t seem to be able to afford living space. NUSKIN and new Life Insurance, big-box Fast Food and sugar-drink companies such as Coca Cola drove up commercial real estate prices.

As a result, the face of the city has changed, over the last six months (faster than in the US).

One can spot the need for women gyms, for skin care and cosmetic products.

But then, love sees it differently. Here were mothers of revolution . Of future leaders.

and of past glory. Still out there before dawn. Still guarding the age of romanticism (w/out make-ups or cosmetic surgery).

Still staying fit for the fight. Vietnam is synonymous with war. War against Chinese invaders, French colonialists,  American reluctant Imperialists, Cambodian “cap-duon” and now, in full circle, back to the Islands against the Chinese  industrialists.

Still “Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay”, still with that cigarette-hoarse voice of Khanh Ly, the exile folk singer, muse of Trinh Cong Son (and Trinh Nam Son will be here for just one night) known as Vietnamese Bob Dylan.

Love sees it differently. The same song could be used to soothe the soul, comfort the afflicted, or to motivate the team . At any age, at any time.

I blogged about the resilience of the Vietnamese women (Mom’s Ao Dai).

Now I realized I did not know what I was talking about. I barely scratched the surface .

The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram spoke of a woman doctor who walked the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just to be near the war front where her lover had gone before. It spoke of the diary with “fire”. To others, war was hell. Love sees it differently (she died a martyr’s death, never to be reunited with her lover).

The irony did not escape me that, in contrast to Western sense of appropriateness,

here women could be warriors, housewives and heads of  firms, with no conflict.

Their ability to synthesize and compromise says a lot about how this society manage to gloss over enormous challenge.(see After Sorrow).

A city of 10 million or 1 million, it doesn’t matter.  What matter was how those women have taken over the education in public, and the management of the household in private. It’s they who make it happen. Just show up and see at 5 AM, the music and movement. Then you will see the tip of the iceberg. Often we don’t see those undercurrents. But love sees it differently. It got you up early and forced you to notice. I noticed. I learned.

Mua Saigon (rain on tin roof)

Out of hundreds, emerged one. Winner of the throne. Winner of brand simple. Vua Hung Vuong, Vietnam‘s first King. His campaign? Neither communication skill, nor combating skill. But culinary skill. Simple dishes yet full of meaning: square bean cake representing the Earth, round one the Moon.

Harmony without and symmetry within.

Bingo!

The throne is yours. May the gods bless your descendants. Expand and guard the territory now known as Vietnam.

Big and small, wave after wave.

Rain and tears.

Falling on tin roof and tile roof.

Musical- sounding and melodramatic.

Separation and reunion.

Hatred and healing, forgiveness and forgetfulness.

It’s easier to take revenge than to win the enemy over.

Whatever the motive, the results are the rewards.

Mua Saigon mua HaNoi.

Love those wet feet that stand deep in the mud. The agrarian culture.

Back bent over to harvest rice in the bowl.

Um. An di con. Eat so you can grow up and may your future be better than mine. Broken back and broken heart.

Go some place and don’t come back. How can I?

How do you expect me to turn my back to the buffalo in the field or the bean cake on the table?

Brand simple.

Square for Earth and round for Moon.

Incense for the altar and candle for the grave.

Noi chon nhau cat run (birth place and burial-place).

The apple cannot fall far from the tree.

You can take a boy out of Saigon but you can’t take Saigon out of the man.

District 1 to District 10, and any number in between.

Crooks and intelligentsia, fake and real (vang thau lan lon). Who cares!

Keep bragging. It’s your fate to be born here and die here, in whatever style you choose . The lucky ones went overseas. Are they “saved?” Don’t they know, it’s the end of the world, it ended when you said Goodbye.

Mua Saigon Mua Hanoi.

The rain keeps pounding on neighbors’ tin roof. And I feel jolted, by caffeine and endorphin, nicotine and nostalgia. It is so weird that I miss Saigon while already in it. Perhaps I miss what Saigon itself is missing: the longing for things past. Shared poverty and joy. Shared human fate. Bonjour Tristesse. Makes me teary. Makes me want to reach out and pull someone in my arms and say “it’s going to be OK”, you and I, fellow human being. After the rain the sky always clears up. Cry with me and for me, for now, rain and tears. No one will laugh at us. For everyone is doing the same but too ashmed to admit. Mua Saigon. You cannot understand it until you are in way deep.

Death-affirming culture

During lunch time at my first job (Child Welfare Bureau at Indian Town Gap, PA), we threw a football, my first.

That was supposed to be my induction into the Penn State culture the following Fall.

Here in Vietnam, at lunch time, I walk by a casket store. As equally shocking for foreigners as my first introduction to the football back then.

One culture fights every inch toward touchdown (winning is the only thing) while  the other prepared to accept human fate.

In the country side people even pre-purchase caskets to be stored  in the house like furniture, very much like Pre-paid Legal in the US (just in case).

I know this barely scratches the surface of a culture, because cosmetic-surgery is on the rise here (death denying), as modernity starts to eclipse Vietnam’s tradition( age = respect). In addition to this, people also fight for every centimeter in the street and  on the side-walk. There lies the paradox of  resigning to fate and fighting for the future. No offense, but I happened to read an USA Today Blog this morning, describing the author’s arrival to Ho Chi Minh City, and checking in to the Hyatt downtown.  She promised more adventure in Vietnam, but her first installment did not entice me . Too insulated (we checked in, traffic in all directions – has she watched the time-lapse video of traffic here before coming).

I might have noticed the same thing from that vantage point on my first trip (having lunched with a Hyatt’s Boardman out in the terrace), but now that I decide to zoom in, to satisfy my cultural curiosity .

Death is big business here: casket, candle and cremation.

(The other night, I saw a traffic accident  which confirmed this observation besides huge percentage of  male smokers). Most families have ancestor’s photos on the altar (my parents used to have theirs on the altar and now I have my parents’ on mine).

Insurance companies are prospering here. It’s interesting to see the objections people raise when buying life insurance.

Will it cover my casket?

Enough for cremation or a plot of land near the border of Cambodia?

How do my kids prove that I was dead by accident?

At lunch, I also saw a baby napping on a hammock near the casket store.

Life flows continuously here, just like anywhere else.

Except that, at lunch time, I can hardly find anyone to throw a football with. Back then, the sight of co-workers opted for sweats over siesta was a culture shock to me. Just as scooter traffic must be to the USA Today blogger.

Welcome to Vietnam. Cross the street safely. And write something worthy of your stay and your Gold-Card Reward!

From sleigh to moped

http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/12/christmas_vietnam

Ho, Ho, Ho in Ho Chi Minh City. Toys for tots, delivered by Santa on moped.

When the US pulled out of Vietnam, it played “White Christmas” on Armed Forces radio.

Now, it’s peace-time Vietnam, where people enjoy every bit of cotton and confetti used to decorate the city’s manger.

I was there two years ago at that same spot just to witness my friend’s got pick pocketed.

Posing for a picture might cost you dearly.

But people in Vietnam do seem to enjoy the crowd and festivities.

Here in the US, on Christmas Day, all the stores, including fast food chains, are closed (except for liquor stores).

What a contrast!

Yet, both seem to move up one notch on the extended families scale: the atomized US culture makes allowance for families reunion, while the extended family culture in Vietnam  joins the whole city in celebration. Whatever the reason for the season, people feel a need to embrace, to be appreciated (gifting) and to loosen their purses (hopefully giving to charity).

French cultural residue still shows, when people say “Joyeux  Noel“.

As if on cue, I have a Facebook friend who decided to post Francois Hardy’s C’est Le Temps de L’Amour.  People are seen to hang out in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon, taking pictures and taking in the scene.

When I was in Cote d’Ivoire, I sensed a deja vu. It turned out that former Saigon is not too culturally distant from Abidjan. We all read about refugees began to pour over to neighboring Liberia (which some years back had its own instability) in anticipation of a military intervention there to enforce election results.

If you ask the people there, chances are they would say they celebrate Christmas as well, but not in the form you would recognize (longer church service for one). So Santa has to adapt, from one country to the next, and in Vietnam, from one District to another on mopeds.

It must be very hot in that bright red suit in Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Ho Ho, Hot, Hot, Hot.

 

Sound of Saigon

Young population. Lots of noise and headsets. Night clubs and bars open every single night of  the week.  And let’s not forget those Karaoke stores, coffee shops and sidewalk beer stalls. Certainly not Sound of Silence here.

My morning starts with greetings from those neighbor’s roosters. From there on, it will only get louder: bike’s traffic (very few electric bikes), horn-blowing at each turn, people belling on the phone and at people on the other end, CD vendors on wheels with au-par-leur “we-buy-scrap medals…”, bullhorns broadcast a circus act in town etc…..The day finally ends with the peddling sound of a in-call massage vendor.

The emergency responders here drive like a maniac, Buses would swing from the far left to cut through bikes to stop on the right side of the street. Street sweepers would sweep the dust to the side (like their Mexican counterparts in the US who uses grass blowers) just to have it blown right back out by bikes approached illegally on  a one-way street.

Sound of Saigon. Simon and Garfunkel  “in restless dream I walk alone”.

Yet one thing is clear: the barber shops are busy with people who need to clear out their ear wax.  In the US, with the aging boomer population, it is predicted that audiologists will be in high demand. Here, the same would hold true, even for a much younger post-war gen. The DJ’s for sure will need this medical service.

I on more than one occasion asked the waiter to turn down the volume.

He couldn’t hear or understand my request.

At least the sound I used to hear (choppers and gun shots) are long gone.

Peace-time Saigon, with Hotel Caravelle and Rex no longer filled with Western journalists covering the war.  Now, they’ re just local businessmen hang-outs.

District 1 still holds its charm, but many satellite districts have sprung up to accommodate urban migrants.  I was hoping for some peace and quiet in South Saigon. And it’s true that the Highland Coffee in South Saigon close at mid night, Unlike District 1 clubs which have just begun to take on some life (party) at that hour.

I heard about a sandwich stall which only opens at mid-night and closes at 2AM.

Why bother working hard during the hot day when you can take in just as much income with less efforts?

Wonder if she participated in Earth Hour last night? If not, at least, by the time she starts selling her first sandwich, she can say, it’s already another day in Saigon.  And people shout from their bikes: “I want 2 special orders”, all for $1.50.

Then when I hear the sound of the massage vendor, I know it’s time to call it a night. It’s hard not to eat out at night, because it’s a quite a scene full of   sight,  scent and sound of Saigon. In restless dream I join others, under the neon gods that they made.